The America’s Cup races return to New York City for the first time since 1920. This May 6, 7 & 8, New Yorkers will be able to see sailing matches right here in New York Harbor just off Battery Park City.

Warm ups happen on Friday May 6 and official points – counting matches occur Saturday and Sunday Afternoon May 7th and May 8th. This racing weekend counts for one of the six events scheduled in 2016 that counts for the 2017 Cup. Presently the US Team – Oracle holds the trophy – winners of the 2013 America’s Cup.

The history of the America’s Cup is very significant to New York City and to Classic Harbor Line. It was the New York Yacht Club who sponsored the build of the very first Schooner AMERICA in 1851. The US was challenged by England, in conjunction with the first World’s Fair, to build the fastest sailing vessel. The New York Yacht Club responded with Schooner America and prevailed.

Today, Classic Harbor Line’s Schooner AMERICA 2.0 is a tribute to the original Schooner AMERICA. Designed for speed and elegance and sharing the same lines and scale, guests can sail aboard a true performance schooner aboard AMERICA 2.0. AMERICA 2.0 was designed and built by Scarano Boat building in 2011 – an affiliated company of Classic Harbor Line – as are all the boats in the Classic Harbor Line Fleet.

Classic Harbor Line will be on the water both days with tickets available for viewing the races.

Photo shows the US Team Racing Vessel ORACLE, and Schooner America, a 1995 design and build also by Scarano Boat Building.

www.classicharborline.com www.scaranoboat.com

PRESS CONTACT: WILL CANDIS will@candiscommunications.com

**** For the Month of May 2016. Follow Classic Harbor Line on Twitter and Facebook to be alerted of HIGH WIND DAYS such that you can be able to participate in high-speed performance sailing aboard Schooner America 2.0 and Schooner Adirondack. We will alert our followers anytime we have forecasts of 18 MPH winds or greater!

‘Archtober’ (through Oct. 31) This monthlong celebration of architecture and design continues with lectures, tours and other events at locations around the city. Presented by the American Institute of Architects New York and the Center for Architecture — with the participation of 50 organizations — the series includes boat tours around Manhattan, an urban film series at the Guggenheim Museum and walking tours. A schedule is atarchtober.org/calendar. Brochures are also available at the Center for Architecture, 536 La Guardia Place, Greenwich Village, (212) 358-6121.

Brunch is a weekly event all across NYC. Every weekend, hungry diners enter the growing plethora of eateries in search of good food and relaxing atmosphere. This weekend we ditched the usual places and enjoyed a grand brunch with the Classic Harbor line. We enjoyed our meal sailing on the Hudson, aboard one of their elegant yachts. We boarded the “Yacht Manhattan II”, one of two vessels inspired by the roaring 20’s. We met our vessel at Chelsea Piers along with an assortment of other guests and set sail on a gorgeous Sunday morning.

The other brunch lovers on our voyage ranged in age from retirees to infants. Young couples, big families, and in our case lifelong friends filled the boat and took their assigned seats. After we all were seated and given a quick safety lesson, we took off on a leisurely cruise. Guests are treated to a complimentary Bloody Mary or Mimosa. Brunch is served buffet style and divided into four courses. The first course revved up our appetites with mini bagels smoked salmon, fresh waffles and assorted berries. The courses were spaced out enough for everyone to have a bite and take a short break in between to enjoy the scenery. The view is gorgeous from inside the ship. Large windows offer a picturesque view while dining. However, the best view for photo ops is on the outer deck. The outside features smooth bench seating and a protective safety rail. The cruise took us from lower Manhattan all the way up to the Bronx. Having ridden on several harbor cruises over the years, this was still an interesting experience, we saw parts of the city we had never seen before including the infamous little red lighthouse. The smaller boat made for a more up close experience and some amazing photos.

Photo Credit: Julienne Schaer. On a calm, warm summer night, Iron ChefMasaharu Morimoto’s Sushi and Sake Sunset Sail is the perfect way to enjoy the harbor. This light dinner sail features a refreshing assortment of four sake flights that are perfectly paired with two plates of sushi. Dinner is served on New York’s newest and most sophisticated schooner, America 2.0. While relaxing and enjoying the calming waves as they brush against the boat, you will observe the New York skyline, Battery Park, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Read more here.

Do you love sushi? Do you love sailing? Do you love sunsets? I’m going out on a limb here and guessing you’re a fan of all three (we’re not friends anymore if you said no, sorry.) Guess what, this isn’t just a culinary fantasy — from now until September 21 Classic Harbor Line and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto will offer a light-dinner sail on deck of one of New York’s newest schooners.

I partook in the sail this past Wednesday and it was truly dreamy. We sailed past iconic landmarks such as Battery Park, Ellis Island and The Statue of Liberty. It was a beautiful and breezy escape from the hot concrete of the city.

But let’s talk about the star of the show — the sushi. The menu includes a sampling of nine sushi pieces and one roll served in two platings and paired with four sake flights. Everything is served super fresh, stored in special coolers just one hour before the sail.

If you want to snack on some of the highest grade sushi in the city, sip sake all while sailing down the Hudson River, you can buy tickets here.

March 31, 2016

Swale, a collaborative floating food project, is dedicated to rethinking and challenging New York City's connection to our environment. Built on an 80-foot by 30-foot floating platform, Swale contains a gangway entrance, walkways, and an edible forest garden. Functioning as both a sculpture and a tool, Swale provides free healthy public food at the intersection of public art and service.

Art is integral to imagining new worlds. By continuing to create and explore new ways of living, we hope that Swale will strengthen our ways of collaborating, of cooperating, and of supporting one another. At its heart, Swale is a call to action. It asks us to reconsider our food systems, to confirm our belief in food as a human right, and to pave pathways to create public food in public space.

Get Involved As part of creating work that aims to create public food in public space, we encourage you to be a part of the Swale. How do you envision the relationship between art and the public? How can the ethos of Swale meet needs in your neighborhood? Get in touch with us to plan this edible ecosystem. Come visit Swale in various boroughs in 2016 to take part in the caretaking and harvesting process.

Swale is fiscally sponsored through New York Foundation for the Arts. Fiscal donations are very important to this endeavor.

The world’s four billion city dwellers are largely sustained through continual inputs from other places: from food to water, energy, and material goods, as well as outputs of different forms of “waste".

Meet the man who rowed the Hudson River in a canoe made of rubbish

James Bowthorpe was 16 when he had his first big adventure. Then little more than a West Country schoolboy with itchy feet, he decided to up sticks and get as far away from Taunton as his meagre budget would allow. Joined by a friend, also called James, Bowthorpe set about scouring Ceefax for flight deals, eventually finding that, at £25 for one way, Málaga seemed their best option. And so off they went. Having arrived, the Jameses instantly hitch-hiked back to England, that being the cheapest option. They had gone out, only to come back again. But that was enough for Bowthorpe; he had done it.

‘Someone at school said, “Oh, I bet you couldn’t do that” – which obviously meant we had to. I went with £30 and James even less.’

That was in 1993, but more than two decades on, Bowthorpe’s mentality has scarcely changed. In the past 20 years he has been on more long-distance, I-bet-you-couldn’t escapades than most people manage in a lifetime. There was the time, after his A-levels, when he cycled half the way up Canada on his own. There were the summers during his English degree at the University of Edinburgh in which he biked between Moscow and St Petersburg, and then across the Himalayas. He hitch-hiked around America throughout his 20s; has ridden a bike from Alaska to Los Angeles, stopping at every national park en route; and, in 2009, broke the speed record for cycling around the world, doing so in 175 days and raising £125,000 for a Parkinson’s charity in the process.

Bowthorpe in Hyde Park at the at the end of his circumnavigation of the world by bicycleCredit: PA

We meet near Bowthorpe’s studio office in Shoreditch, east London. At 39, he is slight, with a shock of bright blond hair offset by a darker, gingery beard, and wears jeans, retro trainers and a puffa jacket – the Shoreditch uniform (this is the capital’s primary enclave for hip makers and doers), though few wear it with such authenticity.

To call Bowthorpe’s occupation ‘adventurer’ might be appropriate as a catch-all, given his many trips, but it would also do a disservice to the trades he has picked up or taught himself along the way. Over the years Bowthorpe has learnt plumbing, shipbuilding, filmmaking and theatre installation. There was a failed attempt at medical school and semi-consistent work as an independent furniture maker.

‘Put my job as whatever you want,’ he permits generously. ‘But I don’t really like a list. I don’t feel like I’m a list. I think I’ll just always be trying to bring these different things together – not for anything in particular, but that’s my motivation.’

Testing the water on a reconnaissance tripCredit: Antony Crook

His latest adventure, the Hudson River Project, goes some way towards connecting the strands in one coherent bundle. On paper, the challenge was straightforward, if eccentric. Bowthorpe would go to New York, where he would attempt to build, in eight days, a small boat composed entirely of waste found in the city. Then, hitch-hiking upstate with his scrapheap creation in tow, he’d find the source of the Hudson River and row his little vessel back to Manhattan. A small crew would capture his journey for a documentary, to be screened later this year.

The idea started with a trial run in London in 2010, Bowthorpe says, a year after he had been away for six months cycling around the world. At the time he was thirsty for a new adventure, albeit not another of the globetrotting sort, so looked closer to home.

Hudson River Project: exclusive clipPlay!01:20

‘I was being offered the chance to do lots of big things after the cycling, but I wanted to do something cheap,’ he says. ‘Adventure is elitist enough as it is. There’s a perception that you have to have money to do it, so I wanted to do something that wasn’t about distant horizons, like things I’d done previously, but that I could do for free from outside my back door.’

He began to pay attention to the environment around him in London. ‘I’ve always been interested in the relationship between a city and its natural infrastructure,’ he says. ‘Back then I was going over Hungerford Bridge [which connects Charing Cross with the South Bank] for a job every morning and, like everyone else crossing the Thames, completely ignoring the river. So I thought, “Why don’t I make a boat from bits of the city, take it to the source of the Thames, then see if I can row it back?”’

So that’s what he did. In three days, Bowthorpe fashioned a craft made from rubbish dumped in London, most of it imported plywood, and went off to Cricklade, Wiltshire – the first point at which boats can reasonably join the Thames. He was in the estuary within a week. ‘That one was easy, because the Thames is canalised for a lot of its length, but it was just an experiment. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it again – only this time on a river with two polar opposites at either end, “wilderness” and a big metropolis – then explore that connection between a city and its river.’

L-R: Bowthorpe on the build in New York, and wearing his North Flag Tudor watchCredit: Will Robson-Scott

Surprisingly, few waterways fit Bowthorpe’s criteria. The Arakawa, Tokyo’s vast, mountain-born artery, was an option, as was the Los Angeles River – but the former comes with cultural barriers, while the latter spends much of its length encased in concrete. The Hudson, by contrast, has it all: it springs from Lake Tear of the Clouds in northern New York State’s Adirondack Mountains, then hurtles south as white water, taking in various tributaries – among them the Mohawk River – before it enters the Hudson Valley. After flirting with New Jersey’s border to the west, it surges through New York suburbs and finishes, some 315 miles from its source, as an international shipping lane, servicing the most iconic city on earth. If Bowthorpe found the Thames gentle and mannered, he was about to meet an utter bastard.

"Adventure is elitist enough as it is. There’s a perception that you have to have money to do it, so I wanted to do something that wasn’t about distant horizons"

James Bowthorpe

It took almost five years to get the Hudson River Project moving. In that time, Bowthorpe continued making furniture on commission in London, and worked on various other creative projects around the city, including a collaboration with the Southbank Centre to build its temporary installations. He also had two children with his girlfriend of 11 years, an arts publicist.

‘The delay was mostly because I wanted to make a film about the project, to meet and interview as many people as I could along the way who knew about the river and all it’s been through in the past century,’ he says. ‘I needed funding, so that took time.’

James Bowthorpe builds his boat, using only materials found on the streets of New YorkCredit: Will Robson-Scott

Two years ago the logistics, and funding, started to come together. In addition to some individual investors and ‘a significant amount’ of Bowthorpe’s own cash, the watch brand Tudor approached him to underwrite about 60 per cent of the budget. Various companies had sought to negotiate involvement, but Tudor, which has a history of supporting adventure (including the Royal Navy-led 1952 British North Greenland Expedition), didn’t ask him to change anything. Its North Flag timepiece came in handy on the trip, too. ‘One day I was in the mountains, trying to find my way back to the crew from the river, walking through incredibly dense trees,’ Bowthorpe says. ‘I got a bit lost, but I was able to use the watch to determine which way to go.’

When Bowthorpe was 13 his father, a doctor who encouraged him and his three elder siblings to get outside as much as possible, taught him how to turn an analogue watch into a compass. ‘Basically, you point the hour hand at the sun, then bisect the area between the hour hand and 12 o’clock to find south,’ he explains. ‘Then in the southern hemisphere it’s the other way around.’

The project finally got under way in the closing days of October 2015. It was Bowthorpe’s first big trip in years, and joining him were Will Robson-Scott, a film director; Damien Bouvier, a sound recordist; and a friend, Julian Sayarer, who Bowthorpe met when Sayarer broke his round-the-world cycling record two months after he set it. They were going to make a film, and while Bowthorpe took centre stage, he was by no means the star. That was the Hudson River. ‘The idea was never necessarily about my journey,’ Bowthorpe says. ‘It was to make a documentary about this great river and find out exactly what it means to the people along it. That was what was interesting to us, not my boat.’

The kit for Bowthorpe's buildCredit: Antony Crook

Even for an expert forager such as Bowthorpe, finding the scrap in New York was tricky. ‘There was a lot of walking around looking for materials in those first days, and a lot of dead ends. Since the idea of waste management has been taken up by New York, a lot of it is locked up to stop people climbing in skips and stealing it all the time.’

Armed with a rudimentary tool kit, Bowthorpe managed to find the odd bit of timber left at domestic building projects, some plywood left outside an art gallery, and an aluminium sheet – crucial for the hull if the boat was to withstand violent white water. Having committed to building his craft on the street as well as finding its substance there, Bowthorpe first made a wheelbarrow to transport materials, then fashioned a boat from that as he accumulated the last bits and bobs. Carrying, then pushing, then dragging his evolving creation, he made for a curious sight, but this was New York – people were far too busy to care. ‘They’ve seen it all,’ he says. ‘I could walk down the street carrying a half-made boat and no one would bat an eyelid.’

Bowthorpe's boat in its latter wheelbarrow phaseCredit: Glen Kitson

Once the eight days were up, Bowthorpe spent five days hitch-hiking and walking north (with the boat, which limited his lift options somewhat) before setting his craft down in the Hudson in early November. It capsized in an instant. ‘The buoyancy was all wrong, so I had to take it back to the nearest road, change the rotation, and find more materials in a nearby town – specifically washers to help seal it,’ he says.

Despite identifying the craft’s weaknesses, his humiliation continued. It flipped over the first three times of trying. ‘We were constantly failing,’ he says, able to smile about it now. ‘I think the crew found it harder than me, actually. They were filming the whole time, and felt so sorry for me. Damien nearly cried the third time it collapsed. I just laughed. If you’ve done all you can, I don’t think you can take yourself too seriously. And besides, I knew it’d eventually work, but knew it would be difficult too. That was the point.’

Bowthorpe chose the time of year for his project deliberately. He does not like the unnecessary added pain of adventures in vast heat (despite having crossed Middle Eastern and Australian deserts to circumnavigate the world), and felt that going during a shift in the seasons would be fitting for a journey as much about changing landscapes as human ingenuity. It was, though, a belligerently dry autumn, followed by a bitterly cold winter. At times on the upper river he was scraping along in six inches of water, at others he was being battered by rapids, and some sections were so tidal as to be unnavigable, a source of frustration for someone with Bowthorpe’s commitment. ‘There were a couple of small sections we had to skip,’ he says. ‘So I can’t actually say I’ve rowed the whole Hudson, annoyingly.’

There were numerous other problems. Thanks to the river’s flow, Bowthorpe’s days were limited to six-hour periods during which it was possible to progress, and only three of those hours were in daylight. He did briefly try rowing in the dark, but that came with its own dangers. He came across what he blithely refers to as ‘the odd bear’, as well as less obvious obstacles. ‘One night I almost got sucked under a stationary barge moored in the river,’ Bowthorpe says. ‘They’re not marked on any maps, obviously, so after a couple of experiences like that we decided rowing at night probably wasn’t safe.’

Bowthorpe was filmed for large sections of the trip, the crew following behind him in a small fishing boat, but often the filmmakers were away, interviewing people who work and live near the river. When the group would reconvene in the evenings, generally to camp or spend a night in a motel, they set to work mixing, and watching footage taken that day. Through interviews with locals, Bowthorpe says, the film gives a much clearer picture of what the river represents now, as well as honest answers as to what sort of environmental state it is in.

‘We wanted to link the people we found along the river. There was a deliberate move not to interview any experts. Instead we went for fishermen or longshoremen, people who worked in garages, or rangers in the mountains.’

"We always talk about 'saving the planet', but really it’s the humans who are on the front line"

James Bowthorpe

One of the most powerful discoveries the group made was just how contaminated the Hudson remains, decades after it was ‘cleaned’ by the introduction of modern environmental policies. From the 1940s until they were banned in 1977, for example, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, compounds used in machinery during the mid-20th century) were routinely dumped in the river by nearby factories, contaminating water and wildlife for miles around. The effects are still visible. ‘We met people who couldn’t earn enough money to feed their families, so they were doing subsistence fishing on the river and catching fish they knew were poisonous, then feeding them to their families. There are stories like that everywhere,’ Bowthorpe says.

‘We always talk about “saving the planet”, but really it’s the humans who are on the front line. The planet would exist without us. We all worry about the picture-postcard scene being spoilt, but what we need to worry about is things like that: people not eating poisoned fish, and not having to feed it to their children.’

The aim is to screen the finished film at festivals later this year. Bowthorpe speaks excitedly of plans to involve environmental organisations so viewers can find out more, and of digital spin-offs, such as virtual tours of the river to show it off – particularly to New Yorkers, many of whom are prevented from seeing the river they own, as state citizens, because of private land on either side of it. He also hopes to one day develop a testing device to ascertain water quality anywhere in the world, should a technology company be willing to help.

Bowthorpe on the vast Hudson RiverCredit: Will Robson-Scott

Bowthorpe rowed into Manhattan on December 20, nearly two months after he set off. He was exhausted and frozen, but only a day beyond his self-imposed deadline to make it home for a family Christmas. When I ask which was harder, cycling around the world alone or rowing a scrap-built boat down the Hudson, he is unequivocal. ‘Building a boat and doing that, that was like cycling around the world on a bicycle that’s totally broken, and going down a road that barely exists any more. All that was deliberate, though, because it was kind of an absurd idea from the start, really.’

So, given that, what is James Bowthorpe’s next big adventure?

‘I think this might be the last one,’ he says, nodding to himself. ‘I don’t feel like I’m halfway done with it. There’s a lot to do, but that’s good. You should always have an impossible project on the table.’

January 13, 2016

Welcome to the New York City Water Trail Association

NYCWTA is a not-for-profit stewardship group comprising over 20 community-based non-motorized boating organizations in and around New York City.

Our mission is to promote the creation, improvement, and preservation of suitable launches, landings and boathouses for paddling and rowing in all five boroughs and the harbor at large in order to advance awareness of the public ownership of our waterways, and to foster maritime education, recreation and environmental stewardship.

Our website is evolving and continues to imporve, so check back soon.

NYCWTA is under the fiscal sponsorship of the Hudson River Watertrail Association, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit.

September 24, 2015

Windsurfer details rescue from Hudson River

STONY POINT - A windsurfer who was rescued from the Hudson River last Sunday sat with News 12 to detail his ordeal.

Ben Kaufman, of New City, says that when he set out to windsurf amid what he considered ideal conditions, he could not have predicted that things would go so awry.

A GoPro camera was running as Kaufman's mast suddenly snapped in the middle of the river.

Kaufman maintains that he wasn't in any danger, but says he is lucky that a boat from the Rockland County Sheriff's Office was on the river.

After being notified by a boater of Kaufman's plight, two officers on a small vessel pulled him out of the water. Kaufman had been wearing a life vest and safety helmet, but a swim to shore, with board in tow, would have taken hours.

Officer Todd Farmer, of the Rockland County Sheriff's Marine Unit, tells News 12 that while conditions may have been ideal to Kaufman, the wind that day made waters rough and dangerous.

The experience hasn't put a damper on Kaufman's enthusiasm for windsurfing. He says he just has to wait to get a new mast before hitting the waters again.

Kaufman is one of more than 100 members of the Hudson River Windsurfers, an informal group of like-minded people which he founded in the early 1990s.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan focuses on the East Side and the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. But a prominent councilman wants a Hudson River route, too.

A key member of the City Council will call on Mayor Bill de Blasio to add a Hudson River route to his five-borough ferry service plan.

Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, chair of the transportation committee, will make the request during a hearing Monday on the mayor's plan.

"I don't expect the administration to include the expansion of ferry service along the west side during this phase," Mr. Rodriguez admitted. "Still, it would be an important new form of transportation" for communities along the Hudson River, he said.

The councilman envisions a ferry route connecting Battery Park to 72nd Street and 125th Street, and perhaps extending to Inwood and Riverdale. If even a fraction of tourists chose to travel to those neighborhoods, the economic boom would be significant, he said.

Mr. de Blasio wants routes serving the Bronx, Staten Island and the Rockaways, among other places. Fares would be $2.75—the price of subway and bus rides—rather than the current $5 fare for East River service. The economics of the plan are sure to be questioned, as current fares on some routes are several times the price of a MetroCard swipe even with the city providing subsidies that far exceed those for subways on a per-ride basis.

The city is currently reviewing responses to a request for proposals for operators of the ferry service. Maria Torres-Springer, president and CEO of the city's Economic Development Corp., will testify at the Monday hearing, as will ferry advocates and experts.

"Citywide ferry service will make our city a more equitable place while also improving access and resiliency for New Yorkers," a spokesman for EDC said. "As we move forward with implementation of the system, we will continue to work with community members and elected officials to ensure the system can best connect our waterfront neighborhoods and serve people across the city."

A spokesman for Mr. Rodriguez said Helena Durst, a member of the prominent real estate family and head of the New York Water Taxi, would also testify, but a Durst spokesman said that was "news to us."

Roland Lewis, president and CEO of the Waterfront Alliance, said the mayor's plan has real promise, but the administration still needs to address questions surrounding costs, transfers between ferries and the traditional transit system, and how frequently the boats will run.

"They're moving as quick as they can," Mr. Lewis said. "But people still have a lot of questions."

Many who have driven by or over the Hudson River around the Glens Falls region in the past few days have noticed how low it is.

The river appeared 10 or 15 feet below normal at Haviland Cove as of Monday afternoon, and the drop was quite noticeable in spots downstream as well.

So what caused the river to drop so much in recent days?

Boralex Hydro Operations was doing work at its dam in Glens Falls in recent days, which prompted the company to have to manipulate the river’s flows.

The dam is located near Finch Paper Co.

Chris Harrington, Queensbury’s water superintendent, said DA Collins Construction was also doing some work at the dam near Sherman Island in Queensbury.

He said the area behind the Queensbury dam was being refilled as of Monday, and once it was filled, flows should return to normal in the next day or so. Andy Davis, manager of community relations for Brookfield, said the work done at Sherman Island was not responsible for the drawdown, however.

HUDSON RIVER MILES

HUDSON RIVER MILES

The Hudson is measured north from Hudson River Mile 0 at the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge is at HRM 12, the Tappan Zee 28, Bear Mountain 47, Beacon-Newburgh 62, Mid-Hudson 75, Kingston-Rhinecliff 95, Rip Van Winkle 114, and the Federal Dam at Troy, the head of tidewater, at 153. Entries from points east and west in the watershed reference the corresponding river mile on the mainstem.